American Soldiers

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Attacks against the American occupying force in Iraq escalated yesterday as two soldiers were killed and four were wounded in two separate ambushes on military convoys in one of the most violent days since the end of the war. Attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and small arms at an eight-vehicle supply convoy in what military officials described as an ambush at 6:15 a.m. near Hadithah, 120 miles northwest of...

If you want to understand the chaos that is now Iraq with ISIS on the rise and almost everything America thought it had built crashing down, don't miss Frontline's "Losing Iraq" at 10 tomorrow night on PBS. No one on TV has done better investigative and long-form journalism on Iraq than Frontline. Period. And Tuesday's "Losing Iraq" is a stunning catalog of American ignorance, arrogance, lies and senseless death and destruction. If you thought you were over George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, this will make you seethe all over again at them and publications like the New York Times, which let Team Bush sell its lies and lead thousands of young Americans to their deaths.

WASHINGTON -- For years, the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga., which is meant to teach combat skills to Latin American soldiers, has come under political attack.Rep. Cynthia A. McKinney, a Georgia Democrat, has gone so far as to call it the "School of Assassins" because of human rights abuses she says were committed by some of its graduates.But the school's federal funding has never been in jeopardy -- until now.Late Thursday, the House cut funding that would have paid for training the soldiers from South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

The only issue that President Obama and I agree on is getting our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. As a Vietnam veteran, I personally witnessed the killing fields of American soldiers when that corrupt government and its citizens did not want us in their country. Contrary to The Sun editorial board's recent suggestion, we have wasted enough American lives and treasure on this part of the world ("The Karzai enigma," Dec. 2). In fact, we should pack up and leave now. Staying another minute in this ungrateful country isn't worth a single American life.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The last day of the worst month of car bombings in Iraq targeted the most vulnerable and proved the most horrifying. Children gathering for candy from American soldiers at the opening of a sewage treatment plant bore the brunt yesterday of a series of guerrilla bombings that killed at least 35 youngsters and 14 adults. About 200 people - many of them children - were wounded in the attacks. It was the worst single death toll of children since the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003.

By Borzou Daragahi and Raheem Salman and Borzou Daragahi and Raheem Salman,LOS ANGELES TIMES | July 14, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The American soldiers had come yesterday morning to search for explosives in a neighborhood packed with children. Instead, a suicide bomber found them. In the deadliest insurgent attack in Iraq in more than two months, and the most lethal involving children since September, an explosives-filled SUV killed at least 27 Iraqis and a U.S. soldier. About two dozen of the dead were youngsters who had been playing near U.S. soldiers at an impromptu checkpoint in Jadida, a lower-class residential district of low-lying buildings and rotting water mains populated by Shiites, Sunnis and Christians.

A standing joke around the well-appointed office suite of U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John C. Doesburg is that he was 4 inches taller when he enlisted 35 years ago. Considering the general's 350 parachute jumps - and the cumulative shock to his body meeting Earth - it is easy to see that the humor contains a large measure of admiration. Doesburg, commander of the Army Research, Development and Engineering Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, will retire today from the military. At 57, he takes with him the satisfaction of forming and directing a unit that dreamed up and built a new generation of war gadgetry - and of working to better shield American troops in Humvees in Iraq.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - On the street corner 50 yards from a group of U.S. soldiers, a giggling 10-year-old boy clutched an AK-47 assault rifle, which was fully loaded and ready to fire. The rifle, once the property of the U.S. military, would not be fired in the direction of the soldiers on this night, but soon would be. Muhammad al-Jurany got the weapon from a member of the new Iraqi security apparatus, the Facilities Protection Service, a force of 14,500 armed guards who are to protect hotels, government buildings and oil pipelines, among other fixtures.

SO NOW that American soldiers are dragged through the streets of Mogadishu and at least a dozen American soldiers are killed in only one sunny weekend on the tropical coast of your friendly Indian Ocean, is there any lesson to be gained by the Great Humanitarian Somalia Campaign of 1993?Yes, there is. It is that the United States should abandon all the fuzzy, imprecise, well-meaning policies of humanitarian intervention, multilateralism and multinational peacekeeping and return to traditional policies of self-interest backed up by overwhelming and unmistakable American and American-led force.

All the recent stories about Somalia have left me with the same question:Why do the people there hate us?Why are the people there killing our soldiers, stripping their bodies and dragging them through the streets?Don't they know that we came to feed them?So why are they trying to kill us?Examine the account of Chief Warrant Officer Mike Durant, the captured American helicopter pilot who was released yesterday."We lay there on the ground beside the aircraft," Durant told a British journalist, "and I saw people coming out of tin shacks trying to get to us."

Dressed in the traditional garb of a Civil War Union soldier, Vince Vaise led the two dozen marchers through Mount Auburn, Baltimore's oldest African-American cemetery. Sword drawn, and a stoic look upon his face, Vaise and his followers snaked through the overgrown grass Sunday before stopping at a small white gravestone, which he later explained belonged to Peter Purviance, the city's first freed slave to join the Union army. On this eve of Memorial Day, Vaise and the small group spent the afternoon honoring African-American veterans from the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

Vice President Biden, Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens: Each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy. We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional -...

Gens. John Allen and David Petraeus have been stupid in their misuse of technology, for a flirtation in the case of the former and an affair in the case of the latter ("Pieces of a puzzle," Nov. 14). As philanderers, these two men are abject failures, and if discretion is the better part of valor, they have shown none in their flings with two married women. Those who argue that dalliances should be perfectly fine among consenting adults and American puritanism is a rude intrusion in the private lives of public figures are wrong in their approach to this widening scandal.

Regarding your recent report that more than 250 members of the Maryland National Guard are being deployed to Afghanistan ("More Md. Guard units headed to Afghanistan," Aug. 15): Over the past 10 years hundreds of American soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, including 34 this year alone. Yet neither presidential candidate says a word about this lunacy. The presidential dialogue does include charges that Mitt Romney is "deranged" and President Barack Obama is a "liar. " That's hardly the talk of serious statesmen.

Boys' Latin is gearing up for round-the-clock lacrosse starting Thursday morning to raise money for wounded American soldiers through the Wounded Warrior Project. Shootout for Soldiers is a 24-hour lacrosse game set to take place from 9 a.m. Thursday through 9 a.m. Friday. The 24-hour game, for males 10 years old and up, will be divided into 24 one-hour sections. A number of professional and college players have signed up to play and support the benefit. Through lacrosse, the goal is to raise significant funds for wounded American soldiers as well as establish a stronger connection with local veterans.

It is being speculated that the American soldier who shot so many children and Afghan civilians recently probably suffered from battle fatigue and post traumatic stress disorder ("The killings in Kandahar," March 13). The Taliban has responded to these killings, as expected, in an opportunistic fashion, getting political mileage out of the tragic episode for itself and stirring up hatred against the Americans and nationalistic fervor across Afghanistan. Interestingly, the Taliban hit the right chord when it commented that an American trial declaring the perpetrator of the killings as a mad man, who acted under the duress of a mental breakdown, would only show the world that the U.S. is sending lunatics to Afghanistan.

Boys' Latin is gearing up for round-the-clock lacrosse starting Thursday morning to raise money for wounded American soldiers through the Wounded Warrior Project. Shootout for Soldiers is a 24-hour lacrosse game set to take place from 9 a.m. Thursday through 9 a.m. Friday. The 24-hour game, for males 10 years old and up, will be divided into 24 one-hour sections. A number of professional and college players have signed up to play and support the benefit. Through lacrosse, the goal is to raise significant funds for wounded American soldiers as well as establish a stronger connection with local veterans.

Henry A. Mucci,88, an Army colonel who led the raid that rescued survivors of the Bataan Death March during World War II, died Sunday in Melbourne, Fla.He headed the January 1945 mission that freed 511 men. Most of them were American soldiers who had endured brutal confinement in the Japanese prison camp at Cabanatuan in the Philippines for nearly three years.Pub Date: 4/25/97

The daylong conference Saturday at Johns Hopkins Hospital was held to showcase advances on research into traumatic brain injury. One recurring theme was the devastating toll such injuries have taken on an estimated 200,000 American soldiers wounded by explosions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The PowerPoint-wielding medical specialists had much progress to share. But the extent to which these brain injuries remain a stubborn mystery was highlighted when a doctor who treats soldiers in Fort Drum, N.Y., stepped up to the microphone at Turner Auditorium.

Is America safe? Militant Islamic leader Osama bin Laden was shot and killed by American soldiers. Responsible for the September 11th terrorist attacks, bin Laden's death ended a 10-year worldwide man hunt. President Barack Obama announced," justice has been done. " Has justice really been done? Or is this occurrence just room for more retaliation from the Middle East? Who is to say that America won't be attacked again? The "martyrs" who followed Osama bin Laden could very well be upset about their leader's death.